


Present and accounted for.

by orange_crushed



Series: The Masterverse [6]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Crack, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:37:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is uncomfortably familiar," Martha said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Present and accounted for.

"Doctor," Rose began, in a mild tone, "who's that great big present from ?"

They stared at the table together, hand in hand; the happy chatter of their friends at a low buzz behind them. Without turning around, Rose could tell three things- her mother had drunk slightly too much of the ungodly expensive Crellian champagne and now she and Mickey were starting in on the cheap Californian stuff; Jack was hitting on both Sarah-Jane and Donna simultaneously and getting A.) nowhere and B.) somewhere; and that Martha and Tom were murmuring to one another in playful tones about how _their_ decorations were going to be at their own celebration. All three warmed her heart.

The overlarge box sitting on the edge of the gift table, somehow, did not.

"Oh, that's from- I'm sure I know. It's got to be-" he said, then stopped, itched the back of his neck with his free hand, and shrugged. "No idea. I was bluffing. Did you check the tag ?"

She did- blank. Curiosity tugged, she circled it, eyeing the neat but not overly elaborate wrapping. It was not the sloppily-taped but lovingly be-ribboned effort of Mickey, nor the professional and elegant gift from Sarah-Jane. It was not Donna's gift, which had actually been gift certificates to several better outer-planet spas (but no shuttle tickets, she'd insisted, oddly vehement.) It was not Martha and Tom's generous appliance purchase- a washer/dryer combo that would not try to put Teflon on all of her clothes like the fiftieth-century machine that the Doctor had always carted around. ("Teflon makes everything slide off," he'd said once, cheerfully demonstrating on his own suit with a pan of marinara sauce. It was perhaps not the most appetizing illustration.)

"Could be from Jack," she said, dubiously.

"Er, no. His was the-" the Doctor whispered briefly in her ear. She giggled. "Remember ?"

"I do now."

The box was too large for one person to lift, and, as they slid both of their arms underneath it to maneuver it off the table, they discovered it was also incredibly dense. Donna wandered up, curious, and gave them a hand, straining under the weight. "What is this full of ?" she wondered aloud. "Gold bricks ? Lead bricks ? Rock salt ?"

"Nah," the Doctor said. "If it were rock salt, they'd have given us an ice-cream maker to go along with it." Donna walloped him in the arm. "What ?"

"Use the sonic," Rose gestured, vaguely. "Read the heat signature or the atomic whatever."

"I've got a sensor pad back on the TARDIS-"

"You could just unwrap it," Jack called out, from behind them. They both turned to face him. He shrugged and sipped his drink, grinning sideways at Martha, who wore a similar smirk. "Maybe Doctor Jones can correct me, but I was under the impression that's standard operating procedure for wedding gifts."

Rose and the Doctor shared a glance.

"Yes, well," the Doctor huffed. "We could always do that." He and Rose reached for opposite corners and pulled a flap of the paper apart, hesitantly. Their small crowd gathered around. The paper tore away to reveal a cardboard box with a familiar logo on top.

"That's a funny bunch of circles," Jackie sniffed. Rose watched as the Doctor took a second glance and paled slightly.

"I don't want to alarm anyone, but-" he said, holding his arms up defensively between the box and his guests, "ifyoucouldalljustbackawayslowly-"

"Can you say that again ?"

"BACK," he said, helplessly, waving his arms like a goose. Rose wondered, nervously, if the overload of domesticity had finally cracked some kind of seal on his brain. Maybe the bouquet-tossing had been too much, after all. "NOW."

And the box exploded, as it was meant to.

"RUN IN TERROR !" shouted an awfully familiar voice, as a dozen mecha-bots with razor-sharp blades unfolded themselves from the spent box casing. "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES !" The bots staggered and creaked towards the party guests; Sarah-Jane, thinking quickly, hurled a folding chair over her head, striking one of the bots and shattering it in a shower of sparks. "AND STOP DOING THAT," the voice added.

It became a scene of chaos.

Jackie and Mickey hurled an empty wine crate at the closest bot, which got stuck inside and ran around for a long minute before tumbling into the cake table. Martha and Tom tripped a pair of bots and drove them into the ground with folding chairs as stakes, hammering out their control centers with serving tongs. Jack shot two bots through the command cores neatly, and helped Donna beat a third and fourth into spare parts. Several more were felled with a group charge, led by a heroic Sarah-Jane with a tent pole. The Doctor tried to examine the remaining two bots, was promptly choked and electrocuted, and had to be rescued by Rose, who was wielding a massive silver-plated serving dish and looking very put out. It was a short and messy battle.

"Alright," Rose growled, looking around for survivors. "That's it." Her eye caught a skinny figure hurtling away over the overturned gift table, making for the lawn; she took a steady stance and hurled the serving dish with all her might.

It connected with his skull and he went face-down into the marigolds.

"This is uncomfortably familiar," Martha said.

 

 

"You can't say," the Master said, when the dust had settled and he'd been tied firmly to a pile of folding chairs, "that I didn't try."

"Nobody could say that," the Doctor replied, dryly, a fire extinguisher still in his left hand.

Their guests had mostly drifted away; Martha and Tom were headed home on a late train, Sarah-Jane back on the road to pick up her young charges; Jack and Donna and Mickey and Jackie and the remainder of the bar getting up to god-knows-what inside the TARDIS. The newlyweds were still putting out the odd fire. And trying to figure out how best to fit the Master onboard with the least amount of mutiny and attempted homicide.

A solution wasn't really presenting itself.

"And you were surprised," the Master asserted.

"We were completely surprised," Rose agreed. She leaned down and kissed the Master's grimy cheek; he pretended not to like it, and failed, with an expression of fatuous glee. "You're a horrid, horrid thing and we hated your present. Really and truly."

"Oh, go on," he said.

They did.


End file.
